LinkedIn 101: networking authentically on LinkedIn with Sarah Clay

Hi, everybody, and a very warm welcome to Cultural Communication Confidence with me, Victoria Rennoldson. And I am really excited to have on the show today Sarah Clay. Hello, Sarah. Hello, Victoria. Great to have you here. Now, Sarah, I was incredibly excited to have on the show today because you are all things LinkedIn expert, as I understand it, but perhaps you can explain a little bit more about exactly what it is that you do, Sarah?

Yes, indeed. LinkedIn is my bag. So I niched into LinkedIn – oh, gosh, I don’t know, just, I started niching into LinkedIn just before we went into lockdown and of course then everybody said: ‘help, I need LinkedIn’. It’s the most amazing platform, I love it. So I work with entrepreneurs, I work with business owners, I work with employees, helping them have their own voice on LinkedIn and use it in a way that’s for building relationships and communicating with people. Not selling, not hard selling. So I do huge workshops, I work one to one, I work with small groups, medium sized groups, all kinds of ways that I work. I do have a process that I have throughout, however I teach and however many people. But at the end of the day, it’s just getting people confident and understanding what LinkedIn is about and helping them maximise the platform form to maximise their own voice.

I love that. I like that idea of maximising your own voice there, because I know from the people that I speak to sometimes LinkedIn can seem quite formal. For some people, they see it obviously for job search, but they’re sort of a bit unsure about how to engage there, and feel almost a little bit fearful. I don’t know if that, that’s something you see or hear coming up with the people you work with?The word ‘fear’ comes up all the time, so well spotted. People do think it’s something, you know, a lot of people think that LinkedIn is something that it isn’t. They think it’s a very formal place, which it did used to be, to be fair, and as far as job seekers are concerned, you used to just sort of plop your CV in there and run away and hope that somebody saw it. But it doesn’t work like that anymore. You need to be very, very proactive on the platform to get your voice out. And I use a lot of everyday analogies in my training and teaching. One of them I use is, if you’re planning a party in your house, you’ve got the DJs come over, you’ve cleaned the house, the caterers are there, you’ve got the drinks all ready. And you forgot to go out and invite people. So no matter what you do on LinkedIn, you’ve got to go out and ask people and talk to people so that they’ll come to you. So no matter how good your content is, you still need to do that. The sort of going out and and building those relationships, which is how you and I met, for example. You know, we were chatting to somebody, a mutual friend, and then we collided with each other as people do on LinkedIn, and we got chatting. Here I am on your podcast, and you’re coming on my live show as well. You’ve been on my live show as well. It’s brilliant.

I think that’s a really, yeah, that’s absolutely right. And I know myself, I have a lot of, not just transactional conversations, but actually some really genuine friendships that have come about from conversations that I just happened to build the connection on LinkedIn and I equally highly, highly value it as a place. So I’m glad you’re acknowledging the fears. I know people do have that fear of it. So what is, if you’re going to sort of sum it up, what is LinkedIn really about today then? Like, what’s the opportunity? Oh, my gosh. So I always start with, when I’m training, this is my, you know, what is LinkedIn and what it isn’t. And what it actually is, is the biggest networking party in the world, because it is networking. And treating LinkedIn like an in person networking event just helps get rid of all the fears. And just think that when you’re posting on LinkedIn, you’re talking to a group of people in a room. When somebody posts and you think: ‘that’s an interesting post, I’d quite like to comment on that post, but what on Earth am I going to say?!’ You know, without seeming stupid or silly or whatever. Just imagine that that person has spoken those words to you, to your face. What would you say in response? One thing you wouldn’t say is ‘great post’,, and then walk away or just stick your thumbs up or something. You’d actually say: ‘this is interesting’, and you might have a conversation. Do the same on LinkedIn as you would in real life, because it is networking, and that’s what it is. Whatever we’re doing on LinkedIn, it’s all about networking. And dispelling the myth that it’s a formal place, where we have to behave by certain rules, is the first part of any training I do. And it’s just wonderful when you see people sitting in a room with a sort of scowly face, on it ‘Oh, I hate LinkedIn, don’t want to do this’ and I start talking in these terms and their faces open up and they think, ‘really, is it that simple?’ And yeah, it is.

That’s so funny, that makes me laugh so much, that idea that, you know, we’d never say those words, ‘great post’ or ‘great comment’. You know, I think that’s a really nice way that you’ve put that, which is actually you just, it’s like talking. We’re not trying to sort of speak in some special way, some LinkedIn language. We’re just trying to have a conversation. And I like that very much because that makes it so much easier to comment. And I get the sense as well, people sometimes feel like with posting as well, they have to come up with some grandiose big idea, or something really heavy or worthwhile to say. What do you say to those people who, you know, want to post something but feel perhaps a little bit intimidated about what they should be talking about? Well, sometimes I actually just want to say ‘get over yourself’. But, I wouldn’t say, well, I might, depends on who it was. But, people do think about it too deeply. They just go into this kind of maelstrom of complexity. Yes, there is a place for that and I’m not denying that at all. And presenting you, yourself, presenting your knowledge in a thought leadership format and really trying to change something or show something different, yes, there definitely is a place for that on LinkedIn. But not every day. We don’t have time, people don’t have time to read these long, in depth posts every day. And as I say, there’s definitely a place for them. But sometimes just a short, pithy, interesting comment is actually going to land better with the audience. And more people are likely to read it because it’s short. And that will start to bring more people to you. Once you’ve got them engaged, then maybe start feeding them the longer form content, because then they’re already thinking, whatever this person writes, I like, and I am prepared to invest some time in this, in this person, and read their posts. But mixing it up, mixing up the long and the short. And sometimes a line, one line, can really hit – if you’re clever and you can condense it down, what you’re thinking, one line can just hit the right nerve with people and can just go huge on LinkedIn.

Yeah, I think that’s really helpful, because I think there is for some of the people that I speak to, there’s that sense of, ‘well, what would I even talk about? Or how do I even go about doing this? It just feels like I have to really have something quite meaty and big to be talking about here’. So I love your kind of simplicity approach. I think one other question I sometimes get asked is also this idea of, it seems like there’s more personal posts coming onto LinkedIn, sort of a bit like other social media platforms. And I get the sense there’s quite divided opinion. For some people, they’re like, that doesn’t really belong on LinkedIn, like, that’s just too much. For others, they think, well, that’s quite a nice way to show more human side to being a business leader or being the representative of the voice of the company. Where do you sit with this? This is one I get asked so much, and it’s a really interesting question. And yes, LinkedIn is becoming much more personable, as opposed to personal, and I think there’s a difference between those two. But I also think that everybody’s level of where they want to be and what they want to talk about is different. And, you know, the line in the sand, if you like, is in a different place. Now, I always try to direct people to definitely be personable, but try and think about it in a work way. So, I had egg and chips for breakfast. That’s actually not really very relevant, but we had a breakfast meeting with this person, this person, this person, and we had egg and chips, whatever. That’s much more relevant, I think. It’s, it is, as I said, it is a difficult one for people, but I do think it’s important that we do show our personalities for sure on LinkedIn, and more so. And I think the way that business is moving now, especially in Europe, you know, in the UK and in America, we are becoming much more personable. So if you have a business meeting, you don’t just dive straight in and go, ‘right, let’s talk business’. It’s, ‘how was your day?’ ‘The weather’s awful’, whatever, whatever. You talk about ancillary softer matters as well as the business itself. So why don’t we think we can do this on LinkedIn? It’s crazy, you know, and I just think it makes you a much more rounded and interesting person. But as I say, your line in the sand is your line in the sand, and you need to stick to that and feel comfortable with that. But I’m all for showing a little bit of our personalities, yes.

I’m really pleased you’re talking about it in those terms, actually, Sarah, because I think culturally, and I know there’s a very diverse audience that listens to this. Culturally, some people will feel much more comfortable talking about their personal lives, talking about themselves outside of work context, or more of their personal, personal preferences within the work context. Other people I know just wouldn’t be, actually, that would feel a little bit oversharing and perhaps too much revealing. So I like that way that you talked about the line in the sand, knowing where your personal parameters are. And I really like that difference between personal and personable. That was really helpful explanation, thank you on that. So, you know, I think for me, the other thing that I’m really aware of is that you particularly talk about employee advocacy and I have, I can see your lovely book there in the background, for those of you who are watching, ‘Employee Advocacy on LinkedIn’, I’m really interested, what does that mean to you, employee advocacy? And, what is this about? Why is this such an important topic today?

So I came across the phrase ’employee advocacy’ about three years ago, and realised that actually I had been doing it for years with my clients, without realising that it had a name and it was a process, etc. etc. And I had seen huge results. And I used to run social media, I used to have an agency that ran social media for all kinds of different platforms and I used to run a lot of, pubs’ social media. And I used to always encourage the bar staff to get involved in the social media, because I couldn’t be there all the time, or my team couldn’t be there when exciting things in the pub happened, like there was a band on or whatever. So I would encourage the staff to take the handle of Instagram, or whatever it was, and post up on the Stories. And then I’d give prizes at the end of each month for the best performing story posted by the staff. And what I saw happening was, yes, the engagement, on the channel just grew and grew and grew. But also, it became this sort of culture within the company. So when I stumbled across that it was an actual phrase, I started to dig around further and look at it in a LinkedIn context. And I saw that we can do this in all kinds of organisations, no matter how big or how small. So, for example, a company of, let’s just say 5 or even 500, they’ll put their posts up on their company page and, because of the way that LinkedIn is designed, they don’t get much engagement, they don’t get seen by that many people. So in order to maximise the marketing and get those posts seen by more people, if the personal profiles, if the employees start engaging with those posts, then they’re going to be spread so much further. And in fact, there’s a massive statistic, which I love, which is that posts that go out on a company – sorry, on a personal profile – get up to 561% more engagement than the same post on the company page. Wow, that’s a big stat. Yeah, I know, it’s a LinkedIn statistic, came directly from LinkedIn, and I just think it’s an absolute no brainer, to get your teams out there on LinkedIn and talking to their customers. So, I train a lot of sales teams, but it’s not only the sales teams. I mean, yes, definitely the Sales teams, it’s very important for them to be out on LinkedIn, but also HR, the Tech team, all of the different teams and people within the organisation. Because what happens is, you’re going to get people who want to take more of a tech dive into the process or to find out more about the technical side of things. So who’s there to answer their questions? If somebody is there to answer their questions, that’s going to help drive that traffic to the Company page. From an employee perspective, it’s also huge, because it opens up opportunities for each employee. Obviously sales, so the Sales teams, but things like appearing on podcasts, getting asked to write articles for external publications, all of those kind of things start to happen as well. And then of course, there’s the Team as well, which is building together around this culture and it becomes this wonderful, wonderful culture within the organisation and they start talking about, ‘oh, I liked your post last night/yesterday’, as if it was like a Netflix series or something. The advantages of an employee advocacy system are huge, absolutely huge. And they’re limitless, really. But it’s just getting people involved and wanting to do it and wanting to take that forward. But once they’re on board it becomes very simple. And I, you know,

thank you for explaining as well the benefits, from different angles, because I could clearly see, obviously there’s a company benefit if the employees are posting or reposting and, or adding comments, but actually, to see that there’s opportunity for the individual as well, and, how that might open up opportunities for them. Absolutely. And it really is incredible the opportunities that can start to grow for people. And as I say, being asked to write articles, being asked to speak at certain industry events, all of those things do start to happen. It doesn’t happen overnight, of course it doesn’t, because this is all about building relationships, but it is literally creating each employee as their own personal brand, and it really is incredible. And also what happens in the bigger companies that I’ve worked with, that people higher up, like the CEO or the CFO or somebody else within the organisation that hadn’t really noticed that employee, suddenly sees them on LinkedIn and thinks: ‘Wow, I didn’t know we had this amazing person in our organisation. I’d like to talk to that person about doing something else’, or maybe a promotion, or a pay rise. So internally as well, it can really, really help people. That’s fantastic. So there can be some quite tangible benefits, such as promotion or career progression, as a result of it. Absolutely. Fascinating. And then the other thing that I heard you talk about is the benefit to the culture of the organisation and that sense of all being behind the same idea and the cause, which, again, I really like that idea of it can bring the team closer together.

Oh, it’s absolutely wonderful. And in fact, I’ve got one company I work with on a consultancy basis and initially the idea was I would train them all how to, you know, run their own social media and run their own personal profiles, and work with the C-suite on managing their page. So every month I meet with the C-suite and we talk about strategy for the month ahead, etc. etc. But actually, what we found was that the whole team wanted to come in on those meetings and talk about: ‘oh, so and so’s getting married next week, we need to talk about that. No, it’s thingy’s birthday, we need to talk about that’. And it’s involved the whole company, who are based all over the world, all in different places, and it really brings the company together every month, and we absolutely love those meetings, and it’s just so lovely to see. And, I can imagine it also attracts talent and attracts new people into the organisation when they see this is a good place to work and that the team are supportive of the company. It’s amazing, actually, how that works. So when, you know, there’s hundreds of people out there who are in employment, they’re quite happy, but they’re silently looking, you know, we’re, you know, having a little ‘oh, let’s just see what other jobs there are that I could do if I wanted to leave here’. ‘Oh, hello, this company’s all over LinkedIn. They seem to have a lovely culture and they all seem to get on really well. And, oh, look, they play table tennis, they do away days, they do training. I want to see if there are any jobs for me’. And so what tends to happen is you get people applying to work there even when there aren’t jobs advertised. And obviously the calibre of applicants just goes up and up and up.

That’s fantastic. And I wonder how you do this, because I can imagine that for some companies they probably are more open to the idea and some, the teams are really happy to do this. I can imagine for some teams they might be like, I’m not sure about this, about commenting on the company or, you know, what would I – how would I even do this? So how do you actually support some teams or companies who are really serious about upping their presence on LinkedIn? So the first thing, I normally work with the marketing department. They’re normally the people that bring me in. And I would have, you know, a conversation with the marketing department. We’d look at the profiles of some of the employees and we would choose a small amount of people. We wouldn’t necessarily go with the whole company at first. Sometimes we do, but normally I like to work with a smaller team, who are going to be really engaged in the process. So, teaching them, or it’s not – the initial process is this sort of mindset shift. So helping them understand what they’re doing and getting them on board mentally. And then teaching them what they need to do and how to change their profile, etc. And what tends to happen is, once you get a small group of people in an organisation doing this on a regular basis, then the others go, ‘oh, actually, can I have a go?’, ‘Can I have a go?’ You know? ‘I want to change my profile too, and I want a new photo and a new banner’, and da, da, da, da, da, and it brings people in, but it is definitely shifting that mindset is the first objective. And helping people understand why and explaining the positive things that we’ve just talked about that could happen to them if they do it. And, and as I say, breaking down those barriers and it’s absolutely incredible. I’ve seen the most amazing changes of people who came into the programme thinking ‘it’s not really for me’, and then having that mindset shift and realising it’s not that difficult and that they can do it quite easily and without too much time. And the shift is Incredible.

Yes, because I think you’ve just answered one of my next questions, which is the fear that for some people this is going to take a lot of time. I’m gonna have to be on LinkedIn all the time, but actually I’ve got a job to do here. So, realistically, what sort of time commitment does it normally take from these employees who are being trained up within the organisation? So, that’s a really good question, I have to say, because, you know, how long is the piece of string? But what is important is that it can be done in a short amount of time. Yes, of course, if you’ve got more time, then all you know, I would encourage you to give it. But even when you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, you know, you’re at work waiting, or you’re at home, you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, jump onto LinkedIn and you can make two or three really valuable comments on somebody else’s post, while you’re waiting for that kettle to boil. And yes, of course, at the beginning you’re going to be a bit slower, and you’re going to be thinking about it more. But as you know, Victoria, you’ve been on LinkedIn for a wee while now and, you know, it gets quicker, doesn’t it? It’s like anything, it just becomes easier and quicker. So, you really can make a difference in 10 minutes a day, you really can. Fantastic. 20 minutes, better. But if you’ve got 10, then do 10. Absolutely. And I think I can sort of hear from what you’re talking about here, without revealing all the methodologies, but it sounds like you’ve got sort of really clear sort of recommendations of where to start, where to kind of, you know, do the basics, the foundations and then move from there. So I think that, you know, that to me sounds very practical, and I think that is one of the biggest things that people have with, with LinkedIn is, or with social media in general, like, how can I make this work without it becoming a job in itself or overwhelming? So I really like your approach on that.

Nobody wants to be scared off by the thought that it’s going to take them too long. So, yes. Yes, indeed. I’m going to slightly shift, sort of the focus now and I’m really kind of interested in sort of where you see LinkedIn going. And I know, you know, there are various algorithms and so on which, you know, are top secret and we don’t know kind of what they’re doing some of the time. But I mean, are there certain trends or things coming up that, particularly thinking about businesses and organisations, that they should be aware of when it comes to LinkedIn and how it’s evolving all the time? The fact that LinkedIn have been giving, particularly last year, 2024, more features and, more time to Company pages is a good sign. And we like that very much. You know, we do like to see that. but I still think that definitely for 2025 it’s going to be more of that personal content, more of that, you know, proper engagement with people. And I think that’s going to be the win for, certainly for 2025. And I think getting your, you know, getting the employees out onto LinkedIn and talking to people is definitely going to be the secret for sure. And we, you know, we get bombarded with new stuff all the time on LinkedIn and we don’t, we’re not told it’s coming, and it’s just, ‘oh, look, a new feature’. And it’s all very exciting, but I think overall they are definitely pushing that more personal stuff. They – in the last, about six months ago, LinkedIn said we’re not, we’re cutting down on selfies and, you know, b*** shots and all that kind of stuff, which they sort of have. But at the end of the day, people do love faces. Yeah. Images with faces do better, you know, they get much more engagement, than any other, than any other images. So I think we still need to be doing that. And of course, the most recent sort of big change to LinkedIn that’s been brought in is the video feed. So a little bit like, feeds on Instagram that, you know, you can see just videos from people that you don’t know. So, if you’re posting vertical videos, there’s a big, big chance that those vertical videos will get pushed into people’s feeds that you’re not connected to. So, vertical video is a good thing right now, and with any new feature on LinkedIn, jump on it and use it. Because it’s a new feature, LinkedIn will push it to more people. So if there is a feature, jump on and have a go, for sure. Even if it’s not for you, at least you’ll have tried it, and you may have got yourself out to a slightly wider audience.

Fantastic. So videos, vertical videos, that sounds all great and certainly in terms of putting the profiles in front of new people, that’s obviously a positive thing. Fantastic. Well, Sarah, I mean, there’s so much more I could ask you about. I know myself that I’m always very curious about LinkedIn, and it’s really brilliant to have your expertise and different perspectives on it. For sure, I highly recommend, obviously, your book, but what else? Like, if people really want to sort of find out more about how they can encourage the employee advocacy, what are the ways that, you know, you can support, organisations, individuals, how should people contact you and reach out to you? Well, the best way to find me is to DM me on LinkedIn. I do run free webinars from time to time. My plan is to do them monthly, but it just doesn’t seem to quite happen in my schedule. But, just send me a DM on LinkedIn and say ‘hi’ and I will say ‘hi’ back and let’s start a conversation. And that’s ultimately what it sounds like. It’s all about those conversations. So, Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been brilliant to have you on the show. Really appreciate you coming here and sharing a lot of the insights and expertise that you have, and I know that’s going to be highly valuable to our listeners as well. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Victoria. It’s been fabulous chatting, Excellent, and I’ll look forward to seeing everybody next time on the show.